mr. perlmutter: nephew joey. mr. garamendi: so that was to freeze the level of expenditure and to put in place tax policies so that your oil company executive would begin paying a fair share rather than getting a very significant tax break, beginning to pay their share back into this economy. over time. and this was in about seven years, the percentage of the g.d.p., the gross domestic product that was to debt -- or to the deficit would fall around 11% down to about 3% so that it would be managed over time. going back to your analogy, you got all of those debts built up during the 2000 to 2010 period or 2008 period, and then taking time, six, seven years, to bring it back under control. not with the kind of chaotic cuts that are now being proposed by our republican friends where we would actually slow down the economy. throw some 700,000 people out of work, reducing some tax revenues, increasing unemployment. unemployment expenses go up. hospitals, emergency room expenses go up because people no longer have health ca

mr. perlmutter. the speaker pro tempore: the gtleman is recognized for one and a half minutes. mr. perlmutter: i thank my friend from colorado. i'd invite my friend from texas to come to aura, colorado, where we've, with the neighborod stabilization program, had tremendous successes. this country was on its back financially two years ago. two and a half years ago. we're just now getting back on our feet. my friends from the republican side of the aisle want to pull the rug out from under us. you've got to get strong before you do away with programs. let's talk about aurora, colorado. got $4.7 million to buy homes that were vacant because of foreclosures which were causing blight and lots of property devaluation. went in, fixed the homes, sold them to good families. the neighborhood starts growing again. aurora has taken that $4.7 million and turned it into $7.8 million by the sales of these properties. so the neighborhoods get strengthened, families are helped, we stop this cycle of foreclosure and tough neighborhoods. my friends on the republican side of the aisle are bling all sor

mr. perlmutter: permission to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. perlmutter: i had an opportunity to listen to my two republican friends on the other side of the aisle, i need to remind them when you take a voluntary pay cut and subsidize and give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and prosecute a couple wars to the tune of $1 trillion that you don't pay for, then you let wall street run amuck without any police or wall street, and you have a crash, you are going to have a major debt. so now they are complaining about a debt that they were instrumental in creating. all right. we got to pay it, but you got to get people back to work. the best way to reduce the deficit is to have people working. when you make the cut, president obama has reduced what we are spending in iraq by $100 billion. that's real money. can't just focus on education. you can't just focus on energy efficiency. you got to focus on tax cuts for oil companies, tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. it's both si

mr. perlmutter. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for one and a half minutes. mr. perlmutter: i thank my friend from colorado. i'd invite my friend from texas to come to aurora, colorado, where we've, with the neighborhood stabilization program, had tremendous successes. this country was on its back financially two years ago. two and a half years ago. we're just now getting back on our feet. my friends from the republican side of the aisle want to pull the rug out from under us. you've got to get strong before you do away with programs. let's talk about aurora, colorado. got $4.7 million to buy homes that were vacant because of foreclosures which were causing blight and lots of property devaluation. went in, fixed the homes, sold them to good families. the neighborhood starts growing again. aurora has taken that $4.7 million and turned it into $7.8 million by the sales of these properties. so the neighborhoods get strengthened, families are helped, we stop this cycle of foreclosure and tough neighborhoods. my friends on the republican side of the aisle are blaming a

mr. perlmutter: thank you, mr. speaker. and as one of the previous members of the democratic side talked about, tomorrow is april fools. april first. april fools. the republicans would like to have everybody believe that a bill that just passed the house but has never passed the senate, never been signed by the president, is going to become law. we all know from our civics class that just isn't what the constitution says. but they'd like us to believe that. now that's a bad enough joke on america. but the real bad joke is what's in that bill. and what it does is, we're finally starting to get this country on its feet economically, we're starting to make things in america again, manufacturing is on the rise, but they'd like to see that cut. they want to cut our research into clean energy, which in colorado, for every job that we have in research there are four private sector jobs. they want to cut that. that's the bad joke that's coming up on april fools. the cuts that they ask really take -- pulled the rug right out from un